Workout Week 17.–23.02.2014

In Workout Week posts I will tell you everything about my last week’s workouts.

Monday: BodyPump with Florian. That was one really good workout. I usually still miss one/some reps in some tracks, like when changing weights, when I get too tired or in lunges when my leg starts to feel like it’s going to get a cramp. On Monday I did every single rep there from the beginning to the end. Even in lunges with 6+6 kg on my shoulders: I did all the superslows and bottom-half-fours! And my legs were shaking bad but they didn’t cramp up. Man, I was proud of myself. I’m thinking about upping some weights next time or next week. We’ll see how things go. 

Tuesday as usually was strip aerobics day. We had some strange moves on the floor again and I scratched some skin off my foot. Ouch! 😦 Beside that we did a lit of plank exercises for abs. It ended up being a pretty sweaty workout. 

Wednesday: BodyPump with Maris. We had all old tracks with retro music 🙂 Some the same as in Friday’s Valentine’s Day edition. I added weight in squats and back. We also had 2 abs tracks since we had time for that. The last one was all planks, so hard! But I still felt really good and happy after my workout. My mood was sky-high!

My current weights:

  • Warm-up: 3,5+3,5 / 5+5 kg (depending on the track)
  • Squats: 10+10 kg bar
  • Chest: 6+6 kg bar
  • Back: 7,5+7,5 kg bar
  • Triceps: 3 kg dumbbell; 5 kg weight / 3,5+3,5 kg bar (depending on the track)
  • Biceps: 3,5+3,5 kg bar; 3+3 kg dumbbells
  • Lunges: 6+6 kg bar
  • Shoulders: 3,5+3,5 kg bar; 3+3 kg dumbbells
  • Abs: – 
Weather was so nice on Wednesday and this was my only thought…

Thursday: yoga and cycling. Yoga is so interesting: it doesn’t feel like much but I’m still sweaty after the class. I’m just not flexible and some moves are kind of really uncomfortable for me, even the simplified versions of the real moves. After my yoga class I wanted to do something intense because I had been sitting in the library all day. I did half an hour of indoor cycling, 12,3 km.

Friday began with morning intervals. The same thing as last week: 10 min slow, 2+3+4+5+4+3+2 min fast with 2 min steady between each interval and 15 min slow to end my workout. I know I was a little faster because I counted laps again and did almost 1 lap more than last week. Time: 1 hour, distance: 8,8 km, average pace: 6:49 min per km.

 


 

Now a longer part of this post all about Saturday… 

Elari brought me avocados as a gift 🙂

I was actually really scared and excited about Saturday because it was my first time to try Crossfit. I’ve wanted to try it ever since I heard about it from Instagram people. Heidi was kind enough to invite me to her last Crossfit in Estonia. It was a “Heidi’s special” in Crossfit Tartu. Another fellow blogger Elari was also there among other Heidi’s friends. The people were great, the workout was great, everything was great!  

Getting ready for the WOD…

We had a warm-up and then we learned the techniques of our WOD elements. (It was a beginners’ class). The WOD consisted of:

  • 2 wall-walks or 3 walk-to-handstands on the wall (I did the easier second version)
  • 6 pull-ups (with elastic band)
  • 12 shoulder presses (I had a 15 kg bar)
  • 30 double or 90 single jumps (I did singles)

Repeat for 3 or 4 times, I did four rounds. My time was 14:14. Overall I think it was a 1 hour class. I was DRIPPING in SWEAT after my 4th round. It was intense. I really enjoyed it. Maybe I’ll be going again some time? We’ll see how things work out. 

Photo from Heidi
Photo from Heidi

 

Photo from Elari

 

Almond muffins a la Heidi. Yum!
Almond muffins a la Heidi. Yum!

After working out, Heidi offered us homemade almond flour muffins sweetened with honey… I debated whether to eat them or not. I tried one of both kinds. They were delishious. Since they were still low-carb, I don’t stress about them. 

Crossfit team. Photo from Heidi

We ended our afternoon with Heidi and Elari in BabyBack Ribs & BBQ in Tasku Center. We had a lovely chat and yummy food. Me and Heidi both had a steak (mine was medium-rare plus), bacon, mushrooms, coleslaw, sauce (balsamic?) and veggie mix. Elari had a chicken salad. It was great to chat with people who share my interest in sports, healthy food and blogging. 

Photo from Heidi

 

My meal: low-carb, delishious, HUGE.

Overall a really really fun day with good friends. I met a lot of amazing people and enjoyed everything. Thanks for inviting me, Heidi! And good luck in Dresden 🙂

 


 

Sunday was supposed to be a swimming day. But the pool was closed again. So the only option I had was running. Since someone needed to know how fast I can run 3K, I did a SFS-run (slow-fast-slow). My 3K time (from RunKeeper) was exactly 20 minutes. Overall distance: 6,29K, time: 42:39, average pace: 6,47 min per km. It was a good run.

 

Running: done; feeling: great!

 

In total:

3 hours of muscle workouts

1 hour of dancing

1 hour of yoga

1 hour 45 minutes of running

30 minutes of cycling

30 minutes of walking

 

 

A lot of variety this week. Changing things up makes everything interesting and breaks me out of routine, that’s great. Next week I’m also going to be trying a new workout at my fitness club. Stay tuned to find out exactly what 🙂

Workout Week 10.–16.02.2014

In Workout Week posts I will tell you everything about my last week’s workouts.

Monday wasn’t anything usual. Back to Tartu! I could have gotten a reservation to BodyPump, the class wasn’t full. But I wanted to try something new and exciting, so I picked Fitness+. It’s described as a very intense interval training with simple running and jumping steps, high calorie expenditure and lots of sweat. It’s supposed to improve endurance and lung and heart work. That pretty much sums it up. Man, it was intense! 

On Tuesday I felt a tiny bit sore from Monday. In strip aerobics we had a nice choreography and also mixed in some ab exercises. A good workout in general. Skipping strip aerobics for some weeks really made me enjoy it more again.

Wednesday was the day I had been waiting for 8 weeks. Finally a BodyPump class with Maris! I literally could not wait. She’s an amazing instructor and BodyPump is an amazing workout. Loved every second of it but it was hard! In lunges I even gave up the bar in the end to avoid leg cramps.

Happy girl after BodyPump with Maris :)
Happy girl after BodyPump with Maris 🙂

Thursday: interval running aka fartlek running. You can tell I liked a workout when I do it again. Interval running is one of those workouts. Let’s see if I begin to love it, you’ll know when I start doing it regularly. Pretty much the same plan as last week: 10 min slow, 2+3+4+5+4+3+2 min fast with 2 min steady in between and 15 minutes slow as cooldown. Overall distance (from my pedometer app Moves): 8,6 km; time: 1 hour, average pace: 6:59 minutes per kilometre. 

On Friday I went to an evening BodyPump. Since it was Valentine’s Day, Maris had Florian join us and they had chosen special tracks from old programs (going back to even program 33, right now we’re usually doing program 88). The tracks were all about love and the instructors wore lots of red and pink 🙂 We also did an extra squat track and literally I think it was one of the most difficult BodyPump classes ever. Switching up tracks really makes a difference! And difference is good 🙂

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Saturday: Zumba party! From 1 to 3 PM we did Zumba at MyFitness in Lõunakeskus. The instructors were Kristi Möldri, Juri Krasnov, Maria Murumets and Pricilla (don’t know the last name, sorry). After the first hour we had a snack break: there was Nutella, rye and wheat bread, coffee, juice, strawberry soy milk… I ate nothing of that high-carb stuff. After we finished with 1 hour and 45 minutes of Zumba, they offered more juice and a fancy whipped cream cake. I just left and didn’t even crave it. The workout was great and the instructors were awesome! But offering Nutella at a fitness event? Come on!

Photo from Maria Murumets
Photo from Maria Murumets

On Sunday I decided to give Pilates another try. I’ve tried it once before but it was really difficult for me since you have to have lots of balance. This time the exercises were a little less complicated and I enjoyed it. I really felt how my muscles got a good workout. A nice ending to my week.

 

In total:

2 hours 45 minutes of dancing

2 hours 15 minutes of BodyPump

1 hour of running

1 hour of high-intensity aerobics

1 hour of Pilates

 

 

In general I really can’t complain about this week. I got my schoolwork started, tried one new workout style, worked on my muscles, had another set of great intervals and enjoyed more dancing than usually. In the beginning of the week my nutrition was still messed up but I’m starting to feel more relaxed and also getting some control over my eating habits. I’m feeling a lot better today emotionally than I did on Thursday for example. Yay for that! 🙂